Stress-induced buckling transition of thermalized graphene membranes
Phys. Rev. B 114, 055402 – Published 6 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/95m2-nf3n
Abstract
Numerical simulations with an atomistic quasiharmonic model are used to study the buckling transition of graphene membranes under compressive stress and thermal fluctuations, with free in-plane particle displacements at the boundaries. Monte Carlo methods combining collective wave moves and replica exchange at different pressures are employed, focusing on static and dynamic critical exponents through finite-size scaling. The correlation length exponent aligns well with recent renormalization-group results and is much smaller than for the strain-induced transition with clamped boundaries. At transition, the dynamic and diffusive exponents match those of freestanding graphene and strain-induced buckling transition, suggesting that stress- and strain-induced transitions share the same dynamic universality, but are in different static universality classes. The small threshold found for the buckling transition helps explain the unusual membrane velocity distributions seen experimentally in freestanding graphene.
